GUELPH POLITICAST #226 - SPORTS!

Like so many events and festivals since the middle of March, the annual Guelph Sports Hall of Fame ceremony was postponed because of the pandemic. One of the inductees this year is Rob Massey, who has made a career out of covering local sports in Guelph, and that definitely deserves to be honoured. So as Massey waits to get his lovely Kiwanis Club dinner, we will tide him over by celebrating his achievement on this edition of the podcast.

Rob Massey has spent 33 covering amateur sports in Guelph, and for most of that time, he was at the Guelph Mercury, where he was the sports editor from 1986 to 2016. After that, he started his own website dedicated to local sports called the Guelph Sports Journal, where he kept covering the beat he had dedicated so much of his life to following, from the ball diamonds and soccer fields in neighbourhood parks to the turf of Alumni Stadium at the University of Guelph.

You have to believe that a man that's covered local sports for this long is a true fan. Far from the stars and the spotlights, he’s looking at athletes as they develop, as they learn their skills and ability, and as the truly gifted athletes start to separate themselves from the pack. Or not. If you’ve been to a Guelph sports field for league play in the last 30 years, there’s been one man there the whole time, telling all the stories no matter what they are. This week, Massey tells his.

On this episode of the podcast, Rob Massey talks about his career in Guelph, how we got started, and why he's still doing it almost five years after the Mercury closed. He also talks about the similarities between covering politics and covering sports, what his regular workload looks like, and how he’s handling a sports-free pandemic. And finally, he will discuss covering generations of athletes in Guelph, whether or not he’s thinking about retirement, and what he’s going to think about when he eventually sees his picture on the wall of the Sleeman Centre.

So let's finally talk about sports on this week's edition of the Guelph Politicast!

You can see Rob Massey's work covering local sports, when there is local sports, at the Guelph Sports Journal here. You can also see all past inductees of the Hall of Fame in the lower level hallway at the Sleeman Centre, or by going to the Sleeman Centre website here.

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Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.